United States at risk of losing research leadership

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, speak at a research conference.

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, speak at a research conference.

He is an entertaining speaker with a dynamic style befitting the leader of a highly respected scientific society.

One of Leshner’s major themes was the increasing globalization of research. The epicenter of scientific research and innovation used to be in North America and Europe, but it is steadily moving from the West to Asia.

This movement can be quantified. For example, research-and-development expenditures in Asia now exceed spending in the United States.

And the gap is widening. From 2012 to 2013, U.S. research-and-development spending decreased by 5 percent while expenditures in China increased by 15 percent. The annual number of research publications is growing faster in Asia than elsewhere in the world.

Simply put, U.S. dominance is fading after a decade of federal research funding stagnation. Growth of research funding by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry also lags other countries.

With the national debate about the government shutdown, these collective observations got me thinking about the implications if the United States loses its leadership position in research. Is the loss of U.S. eminence, which will certainly happen if trends continue, so terribly bad?

Subra Suresh, former director of the National Science Foundation, recently wrote that “good science anywhere is good for science everywhere.” From a humanitarian viewpoint, this seems true. Humankind benefits from an expanding global-research enterprise.

In support of this optimistic interpretation of trends, Leshner pointed out in his speech that authors of nearly half of the research published in the journal Science are from more than one country. This implies that the world’s best research involves collaborative teams comprised of the top scientific minds on the planet.

My view is this: Even though the world benefits from globalization of research and development, there is certain harm in the United States’ losing its dominant position as a research-and-development leader.

A significant fraction of the U.S. scientific work force includes trainees and career scientists from the international community. Historically, these talented scientists come to the United States to train with the best and the brightest. And they remain in U.S. industry and at our universities because our facilities and resources are currently the most advanced in the world.

But should recent trends continue, foreign scientists will not have to come to the United States to realize their career dreams, and established American scientists will move abroad. In fact, most of us know colleagues who have moved abroad or have strongly considered doing so. The result is a vicious cycle of brain drain that will unwind a U.S. innovation economy that has dominated the global scene for more than a century.

At the time this column was written, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal research programs had been closed for more than two weeks. This adds insult to injury and hardly seems the right path to restore U.S. global leadership in research and innovation.

As a society, we should celebrate and embrace global progress in research. At the same time, Congress should aggressively reinvigorate our country’s investment in research so that we lead the world as we have for so long.

Our economic future depends on it.

Dr. John Barnard is president of the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital.